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| In The Crease: By Steve McKichan - Breaking Down The Art And Heart Of Puckhandling |
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Puckhandling in its purest sense is all about possession. Good puckhandling occurs when a team maintains puck possession a high percentage of time after a goalie involves himself in a puckhandling environment.
Many misguided pundits assume a goalie is a great puckhandler because they can make amazing clears off the blueline glass, they can attempt to score on empty nets and they can frequently fire the puck up to a teammate at the far blueline. For me, that isn’t the heart of puckhandling.
In reality, some of the best puckhandling is subtle and very under the radar. In many respects it is comparable to officiating. The best refs are complimented when they are hardly noticed and the lightning rod refs seem to be at the centre of drama and negative attention. The best puckhandling goalies are smooth, subtle, controlled, safe and intelligent and can be described like a Fergie lyric: “no drama…no, no drama…”
Puckhandling can be broken down into two core areas: technical and cognitive:
Technical Puckhandling
In this area, we must develop the actual physical skills a goaltender must possess to be a proficient handler of the puck. Technical puckhandling skill development is a prerequisite before intelligent cognitive puckhandling can be developed. Stickhandling, passing, forehand and backhand clears, handling rims and cross corner dumps are specific examples.
These technical skills themselves would take a full textbook to address appropriately but for our purposes we only require an overview and an approach. A developing goalie must systematically address skill perfection in all of the listed technical areas daily before they can graduate to the Cognitive level.
Cognitive Puckhandling
Now that we have a prospect with outstanding technical puckhandling skills, we need to develop the goalies ability to make the right puckhandling decision at the right time with one goal in mind – maintain puck possession.
There are two core approaches to develop this cognitive or decision making attribute.
1) Consistent regular attention to this area in team practices
Prudent coaches will work systematically in practice on goalie-to-defense puck transitions for a minimal five to 10 minutes every practice. Ramping up difficulty by reducing time and space with increasing pressure will really make the real in-game transitions second nature.
2) Video study
A goaltender needs to critically analyze NHL games to assess the cause and effect on numerous puckhandling exchanges each game. Evaluate whether the transition was successful and why it did or didn’t work.
Take ownership of your puckhandling development. Your ability to move up in hockey depends on it. Remember my rule of thirds. There three things you have to do equally well to advance in hockey. I call these the three “Control Elements:”
A) REBOUND CONTROL
B) POSITIONAL CONTROL
C) PUCKHANDLING CONTROL
Any deficiencies in any of these areas can be career killers.
You can contact Steve with any questions at www.futurepro.com or info@futurepro.com. |
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